Before I Disappear

BEFORE I DISAPPEAR, from Shawn Christensen's Academy Award winning short film Curfew (2012), tells the story of a suicidal, drug-addicted uncle Richie (Christensen), his precocious, temperamental niece Sophia (Fatima Ptacek), and their kaleidoscopic, life-affirming odyssey through the nocturnal New York City underworld. This stylish and poignantly uplifting tragicomedy, which was hailed by audiences and critics alike at the Venice Film Festival and won the Audience Award at SXSW, features stellar performances from an abrasive yet redemptive Emmy Rossum (Shameless), the always-unsettling mob boss Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy), heartthrob turned seedy NYC club owner Paul Wesley (The Vampire Diaries), Stephanie Kurtzuba (The Wolf of Wall Street), and Richard Schiff (The West Wing). Moments after Richie runs a razor across his wrist, he receives a desperate call from his estranged sister (Rossum) who is mysteriously tied up and unable to pick up her vivacious daughter (Ptaceck) from her Mandarin Emily Dickinson recital. What results is a classically original oddball twosome on the run from the mob and the law, encountering darkly colorful characters, galavanting through nighttime locales of outrageous depravity and magical realism, together facing menapause medication, loneliness, poisoned heroin, salvation, and a dead girl on a toilet.

This film is purely beautiful: the writing and dialogue of genuine, human emotion; the wayward, meandering direction that reflects Richie's unstable soul; Director of Photography Daniel Katz's vast widescreen cinematography of saturated colors and lens flares; the neo-realistic grit of the soundtrack feautring Billie Holiday, the War on Drugs, and, quite possibly, David Bowie's greatest song; culminating in the harrowing dilemma of whether meaning and hope can truly be found in the land of the living by a man already dead. Eric Kohn of Indiewire writes, "Christensen and cinematographer Daniel Katz primarily succeed at establishing a distinctly moody atmosphere; set almost exclusively at night, BEFORE I DISAPPEAR takes place with bright colors against a shadowy cityscape, echoing the vibrant personalities struggling against the bleakness of everyday experience." David Roark of Paste Magazine writes, "It's common to see feature-length films that have been adapted from accomplished short films but have no business being feature-length films ... Fortunately, that's not the case for Shawn Christensen's BEFORE I DISAPPEAR ... The result is a dark yet poignant drama about depression and drug addiction captured in both form and content, as Christensen creates a surreal, melancholic tone through lighting and camerawork."